The Mombums of Bottlemas - Part 1

B: alright, look. I did the first one in good faith. I made a valiant effort on the second one before intentionally picking a different hallway. This year we do Christmas my way. 

E: what does that entail, exactly?

B: first i'm gonna brew up some some of this Venom from Mean Bean Coffee Company in Edmond, OK. Then i'm gonna pour it into this really nice insulated stainless steel mug with a silicon lip that someone clearly misspelled "Bottle" all over, and then we're gonna do the Mombums of Bottlemas (the 3 random albums my mom bought me, she's pretty awesome).

Ooh, delightful. I haven't had good coffee in quite a while, so my palate is in very bad shape. I definitely get apple, though, it's unmistakable. Now we listen to them in the order they were opened, and first up is Ghost's Prequelle. 

Not gonna lie, i've kinda always agreed with Kerry King in that i love everything about ghost except the actual songs i've heard. Totally not fair, so we'll give it the old "oh god don't clean out your ears with cotton swabs" and appreciate it for the post-ironic satire i'm certain it is supposed to be. Do i need to do the whole image gimmick rundown?

S: no, i think everyone is as familiar with Ghost as they are ever going to be.

B: thank goodness, 'cause i lost interest after the 3rd incarnation of Dead Pope they elected, so i don't much care that this is the first one where we know it's Swedish musician Tobias Forge. It's their 4th album, so we got that intellectual timespace wormhole to wrestle with, not to mention the castle has wings and that guy on the horse in one of the 5 places you might find him on your copy doesn't seem to think anything is out of the ordinary here, so let it roll. Nope, first we'll restart this antiquated 20th-century circuit box.

Oh, creepy children singing some version of ring around the plague victim, and yep that sounds like Ghost, and blech yep that's Tobias. He is not a bad singer at all, it's the juxtaposition of metal with Paul Simon-esque vocals that melts my synapses. It's a case of just the wrong vocalist. I'm trying, but it's so jarring i can't get past it.

Just so we're clear, i'm wrong. This is great, i just don't enjoy hearing it. Will 37 listens over the next few years change that? Almost certainly, this is what we call an acquired taste.  He's like a bizarro Disney tween villain going through that awkward phase of grappling with the confusing emotions of crushing on the ghoul next door, but knowing it will never work out because you have to grow up and inherit your dad's dumb satanic papacy when he retires, and you'd just have to feed them to the three-headed hell frog, so what's the point?

No, see, i love everything about ghost except the vocals, and that's not fair. Inverse of James Seals, whose voice i'm fine with but whose lyrics i hate. 

Sax solo? 

"I wanna bewitch you in the moonlight." I giggled at that one. I'm a sucker for terrible puns, and that's a great one. 

K, it's growing on me. It is funny. If Pro Memoria doesn't leave you rotfl-ing, then i don't know what to tell you. I'm dying here, it's hysterical. Yeah, i'm hooked. I need to relisten to it a few times, but i'm laughing so hard my eyes are watering. You have to go cold-listen to Pro Memoria, at the very least. 

It really does remind me of Type O Negative, or Alkaline Trio. Not that it sounds anything like either, it's the understated deadpan hilarity of it all. 

And track 9, Helvetesfönster is musically hilarious. It translates as "hell window,"  but it refers to the side cleavage of medieval dresses.

So, you have to think of this album in the proper context. Take the abundance of celebrities (especially musicians) dying over the last 3 years, and compare that to the plague. Every morning you wake up and you're just stepping over dead rotting corpses all day, and you're keenly aware that everyone you talk to or know could just be dead tomorrow and ultimately you get to the question "would you really want to live forever?" No part of that on its own is funny at all, the humor comes from trying to hold it all in your mind at the same time as a conscious experience. I can't, i just end up laughing. Actual death is sad, it hurts, we all have the same gaping wounds but we keep walking around treating each other like garbage in a desperate attempt to avoid that sadness and hurt. 

Just don't. 

I'm not saying it's fun all the time, and i'm not saying you won't do a miserable job of it, but i am saying that in my experience it's much better to treat everyone like they're making the best choice they can from an endless assortment of terrible options and the best thing you can do is to make the part of their day you inhabit as pleasant as possible. Momento mori; remember we must die.

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